One may gather from my surname that I am of Italian extraction. Indeed, that is the case in both paternal and maternal lines: my mother was born near Rome in a place called San Vito Romano, and my paternal grandfather near Verona in the wine region whence comes Valpollicella. Given these facts, some will refer to me as Italian-American.
I myself, however, refer to myself as an American, and reject the hyphenated phrase as a coinage born of confusion and contributing to division. Suppose we reflect on this for a moment.
What could it possibly mean to be an Italian-American? Does it imply dual citizenship? No. Does it imply being bilingual? No. Does it entail being bicultural? No again. My mother was both bilingual and bicultural, but I’m not. To refer to her as Italian-American makes clear and definite sense, but the appellation fits me only very loosely. I am not Italian culturally, linguistically or by citizenship. I am Italian only by extraction.
And that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, or at least should not make a difference to any rational person. Indeed, I identify myself as a rational being first and foremost, which implies nothing about ‘blood' -- or 'soil' for that matter. Even before I am an American, I am animal metaphysicum and zoon logikon. Of course, I mean this to apply (prescriptively) to everyone, especially those most in need of this message, namely Blacks and Hispanics. For a Black dude born in Philly to refer to himself as African-American borders on the absurd. Does he know Swahili? Can he chase down a gazelle in the wild? Build a thatched hut?
And if he wants me to treat him as an individual, as a unique person with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto, and to judge him by the content of his character rather than by the color of his skin, why does he identify himself with a group? Why does he try to secure advantages in virtue of this group-membership while at the same time demanding to be treated as an individual? One cannot have it both ways. To be an individual is precisely not to be a mere member of a group or a mere instance of a type. And to be a mere member of a group is precisely not to be an individual.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre distinguishes between transcendence and facticity and identifies one form of bad faith as a person’s attempted identification of himself with an element of his facticity, such as race. But that is what the hyphenators and the Balkanizers and the identity-politicians want us to do: to identify ourselves in terms extraneous to our true being.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.